| Candidate Profile |
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| Candidate Survey |
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B1. Image/Leadership: What is one thing that distinguishes you from other candidates in the race? |
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The one thing that most distinguishes my candidacy is that I have a credible and detailed plan to make Louisiana better. Other campaigns have sound bites and one pagers; I believe voters want and deserve more. My plan is based on the best thinking across the nation on economic development, education, and healthcare. It focuses on creating more economic opportunity in our state so that our citizens can pursue the American Dream without having to leave Louisiana. I have the unique experience of running our state’s health care system and portions of our higher education system, as well as working at the federal level and in the private sector, and thus have a track record of transforming large organizations that demonstrates I’ll be successful in implementing this plan. |
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B2. Image/Leadership: Please list what you believe are the three most critical factors that are holding Louisiana back from moving forward at a more accelerated pace. |
Positives:
(1) Proximity to family, family roots – as a native of Louisiana, I value the opportunity for my daughter to grow up here and know her grandparents and cousins;
(2) Great people and warm communities;
(3) Great food, culture, and music.
Negatives:
(1) A lack of economic opportunities that drives our kids out of state to pursue their dreams elsewhere;
(2) Inconsistent access to high-quality education at all levels;
(3) A history and perception of government waste and corruption. |
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B3. Image/Leadership: People want to elect a candidate who can get the job done. That means a LEADER. What kind of leader are you? Listed below are several traits of effective leaders. All are good traits, but please indicate in ranked order the three qualities that best define your leadership style and will show voters the most important leadership qualities you will bring to the governor’s office. Visionary; Innovative; Willing to take risks; Listens and brings people together; Doesn't micromanage; Finishes the Job. |
1. Visionary
2. Honest and Accountable
3. Listens and Brings People Together |
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B4. Image/Leadership: The person who is elected governor represents the state of Louisiana to the rest of the nation and the world. If you were to serve as governor in the next four years, please describe the image you think the rest of the nation would have of you and our state at the end of your term. |
A possible excerpt from a future Wall Street Journal article:
The Louisiana Miracle
Over the last four years, what state has increased its high school and college graduation rates by five points, doubled its allotment of venture capital, increased healthcare research by 40 percent, turned outmigration into inmigration, and moved into the top 10 in a national ranking of business climate?
The unlikely (but true) answer: Louisiana.
At the center of this transformation is Governor Bobby Jindal, who has systematically implemented a series of innovative reforms in tax policy (eliminating unorthodox business investment taxes), K-12 (accountability, merit pay, and school choice), higher education (expanded community college system), and healthcare (less bureaucracy, more local control), in a state many had written off… |
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B5. Image/Leadership: List three outcomes you would use to measure your success in your 1st term as governor. |
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First, we will remove obstacles to economic development like the sales tax on manufacturing machinery & equipment (MM&E) and the franchise tax on corporate debt, even as we protect our existing economic base by pursuing comprehensive coastal restoration. Second, I will reform our health care system to put more emphasis on patient and physician control, pursue innovative waiver programs like those implemented elsewhere to provide affordable health care, and move away from a “one size fits all” approach to deliver more services efficiently. Third, I will improve our education system by beginning to fully develop our community college system, elevate LSU to a nationally competitive flagship research university level and our regional schools to national competitiveness within their classifications, and provide more choices for parents of children in failing schools. |
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C1. Economy: Louisiana is still losing many of its young people to other states because of a shortage of the high-quality jobs that attract them. Recognizing that the state has to support its traditional jobs and business sectors while at the same time expanding and diversifying our economy to create new opportunities, please list up to three primary strategies you would use to accomplish this. |
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Creating a business environment more conducive to job growth will be my top priority. Fortunately, the things we must do to support our existing industry are very similar to those things needed to expand and diversify our economy. We must remove obstacles to economic development such as the New Job Tax (the sales tax on MM&E, as well as the franchise tax on corporate debt); protect our existing economic base by implementing a comprehensive coastal restoration plan; fully develop our community and technical college system; conduct a multi-year effort to upgrade our university system; and, enhance our existing industries by adding more value to the things we already do. In addition, we must aggressively sell our state, both internally and externally, to ensure that we get more economic development wins (e.g., new car plants). We should also waive the state’s interest in royalty payments for patented industry research in exchange for increased economic activity in our state. |
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C2. Economy: Louisiana continues to have a serious problem with safety and maintenance of roads, congestion in high-growth areas, and other infrastructure needs. This is hampering local and regional efforts to build on economic development success. Given Louisiana’s current budget situation, which financing strategies would you consider using to address this growing problem: shift more recurring revenues into the Transportation Trust Fund; Raise gasoline taxes; Assess new or higher transportation user fees; Assess tolls (new, old, or special routes?); Local & state public-private partnerships; other. |
First, I will work with Congress and the President – and fight if necessary – to get our fair share of federal transportation money, as we currently receive only roughly 89 cents for every dollar we pay in federal gas taxes. Also, I certainly will consider tolls and creative financing where appropriate, including possibly bonding future federal revenues and using revenues from resulting economic development to speed up investments.
At the same time, we should squeeze out every bit of inefficiency and unnecessary overhead in the DOTD. We will set the budget and then ask the private sector to compete to provide the most cost-effective package of services to design, build, and maintain our roads. Who says the state needs to do all the repairs and maintenance? Why not bid that out and let the private sector do it if it can for less? Perhaps our state agency will win the competition, perhaps private agencies will; either way, taxpayers will win through lower costs and better roads. Let’s experiment with performance guarantees. Shouldn’t we ask contractors to compete to see which one can build a section of road and guarantee its quality for 20 years? These are some of the ways we could get more for every transportation dollar. |
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C3. Economy: Many other states have grown new types of jobs by supporting high-quality research and development, either through universities, private investments or partnerships in areas such as information technology, biomedical research, applied technology, etc. What do you see as Louisiana’s strengths in these areas and in what ways, if any, do you think state government should support their growth? |
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One of the things experts have learned about the powerful economic forces of industry clusters is that they can be present in any industry sector, not just traditional high technology areas. That is great news for Louisiana as we already have several strong economic bases, including energy, petrochemicals, agriculture, manufacturing (e.g., shipbuilding), and medical research. The best things our state can do to support their growth are: (1) eliminate unorthodox business taxes; (2) fully develop our community and technical college system; (3) create nationally competitive university research departments in areas important to our existing industry clusters; and, (4) attract badly needed venture capital. |
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C4. Economy: It is extremely difficult to grow an economy without an available, trained workforce, yet Louisiana faces a severe workforce crisis. If elected, how would you rate this as a priority and what specifically would you do to improve the situation? |
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C5. Economy: What would be your focus in the first year of your administration to hasten the recovery of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast? |
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C6. Economy: Please list any other priority economic development strategies you would undertake to grow and diversify Louisiana’s economy. |
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D1. Higher Education: Six-year graduation rates at some of Louisiana’s four-year universities are improving, but most remain significantly below rates in the south and the nation. The state has already raised some admission standards as one way to address this. What other strategies would you use to improve college graduation rates? |
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I support this approach. Barely one-third of freshman students in Louisiana graduate within six years. Those students who drop out do so at a high cost to themselves and taxpayers. Many have taken student loans and are ill prepared to get good jobs to pay them back. Too many simply weren’t prepared to succeed. Raising admission standards to reasonable levels will increase graduation rates, lower costs to students, and improve the efficiency of our education system. We must make postsecondary education available to everyone, even as we do a better job of preparing students to succeed. As head of the UL System, I saw the benefits of even modest changes to admission standards. |
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D2. Higher Education: Other states provide significantly more funding to their “flagship” universities than Louisiana, recognizing that high-level research, training, and the influx of talented faculty and students contribute to economic growth. LSU is the state’s only top-level doctoral and research institution as labeled by national classification systems and, thus, is our flagship. Do you support additional funding to make LSU competitive with peer institutions? If so, how would you fund it and over what period of time? |
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A nationally competitive LSU would generate $100+ million/year more in federal research grants, keep more of Louisiana’s brightest students in state, attract venture capital, and create thousands of jobs through technology transfer and corporate R&D investments. Therefore, we definitely should elevate LSU to the level of institutions like UNC-Chapel Hill. Historical comparisons suggest it will take at least a decade, but we can make dramatic progress in just a few years. We must prioritize higher education investments as we grow our economy, target resources to academic disciplines important to our existing industry clusters, upgrade faculty selection and promotion practices, enhance the focus on graduate studies, and increase admission standards. |
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D3. Higher Education: Louisiana’s community and technical college system has continued to grow at an impressive pace since the late 1990s. But providing adequate rapid-market response for training, access for students, increasing the number of associate degree programs and creating high-school collaborations remain challenges for some regions and campuses. Please describe your goals for this system and what it will look like four years from now if you are elected. |
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National studies show that about 65 percent of current and future jobs require more training than high school but less than a 4-year college degree. Yet, historically, Louisiana has had the least developed community and technical college system in the South. The result: higher unemployment and a workforce with insufficient skills in some areas. My goals for our community and technical college system are to provide easily accessible, affordable, high-quality community and technical college programs for anyone who needs them; use modern technology to deliver this instruction as efficiently and effectively as possible, as new bricks and mortar are not always the best investment; and train these students for the jobs of tomorrow. |
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E1. Education: Louisiana’s school accountability plan is recognized as one of the best in the nation, yet almost every year there are efforts to change it in the Legislature. Please indicate whether you do or do not support the following key components of the system: High-stakes LEAP tests in grades 4 and 8; Remediation and summer school for students who fail; Annual school and district performance scores and labels; Rewards for schools that improve; Mandatory improvement plans and technical assistance for failing or low performing schools; Recovery School District for chronically failing schools? |
a) High-stakes testing in grades 4 and 8?
Yes
b) Remediation and summer school for students who fail?
Yes
c) Phased-in increases in standards for schools and students to reach the state’s goals?
Yes
d) Annual school and district performance scores and labels?
Yes
e) Rewards for schools that improve?
Yes
f) Consequences for chronically failing schools that don’t improve in spite of extra help over time?
Yes
Optional comments on any of the above:
As scores of studies in the private and public sectors have shown, things that are measured and reported improve much faster than those that aren’t. In other words, what gets measured (and rewarded) gets done. Louisiana’s school accountability program has shed light on the performance of individual schools. This approach is in line with successful efforts that have occurred in states like Maryland and North Carolina. Combined with good teachers, our state’s accountability program represents an important part of an overall, successful education reform effort. This program must be preserved and strengthened. Like President Bush, I believe the path towards education excellence involves more than additional funding, but also requires accountability. We can’t follow the mistakes of the past and quit before we’ve given this program a chance to work. |
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E2. Education: Louisiana has raised teacher and principal pay for many years and has reached the southeastern regional average. While this is good and will help recruit talented people into teaching, there is no correlation between across-the-board pay scales and student achievement. Do you believe that Louisiana should offer teachers and principals performance-based pay or incentives in the future? If so, what kind? If not, why not? |
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Yes, we should ensure that quality PreK is available to all at-risk four-year olds. At the same time, the focus of all early education programs, funded by state dollars, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) dollars, and federal Head Start dollars, should be on giving children a solid foundation of basic education skills to succeed in school. We should especially focus on literacy skills, and evaluate all publicly funded providers on this criterion. Prioritizing our programs for the neediest kids will also help us to secure federal dollars, and targeting scarce resources makes sense as research shows at-risk children are much more likely to benefit from such programs. |
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E3. Education: Public school “choice,” particularly for students in low-performing or failing schools, covers a range of options: charter schools, autonomous schools, schools in the Recovery School District and vouchers. Please describe your position on choice in public education, specifically, what kind, if any you would support, increase or start in Louisiana. |
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Studies clearly show that the most important ingredient in a child’s success at school is having an effective teacher in the classroom. Teacher pay and classroom discipline are the major obstacles to this, so we must address both: (1) Boost teacher pay to competitive levels in a targeted manner; (2) Add a merit pay component to teacher compensation; (3) Develop more alternative schools and other measures to improve classroom discipline where Louisiana currently ranks 39th; (4) Expand proven programs for successful induction and retention of new teachers, including the warranty programs we started at ULS; and (5) Strengthen and expand alternative certification programs to bring in more high-quality teachers. |
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E4. Education: Because of persistently low academic indicators, the Board of Elementary & Secondary Education has recommended programs and policies to improve high schools in Louisiana and make them more rigorous. What else would you do to address the issues facing high schools, especially as it relates to a) preparing more students to enter the workforce or community and technical colleges and b) keeping students in school so that they don’t drop out? |
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E5. Education: If elected, what other specific plans would you propose to sustain or increase progress in our public schools? |
Stronger school accountability measures and more good teachers will make a huge difference over time. In the meantime, we need to give families alternatives to failing schools while providing competition to prompt reform at all schools. Specifically, we should provide parents of children in failing public schools with more options, including charter schools, other public schools, and private schools. It is unfair and uncompassionate to tell parents whose kids currently attend failing schools to simply be patient and wait for reform. Kids only get to grow up once. In addition, we must make it easier for successful charter schools to expand, and for proven models to be launched.
We should also ensure that our students are prepared to succeed at each stage of their development by: (1) providing high school students with better information about career options and college admission requirements; (2) better preparing high school students not bound for a four-year college degree; (3)
promoting initiatives to get more kids interested in scientific, technical, and medical fields (where job and income opportunities are greatest); and, (5) maintaining and strengthening the promise of TOPS. |
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F1. Fiscal Responsibility: Please name your five top budget priorities and list some places you would make budget cuts if needed. |
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Dramatic inequities in property taxation undermine already low trust in government. I am in favor of honest, fair, and consistent assessments, as well as accountability, in the property tax assessment process. We should work with assessors to make property tax assessments available online and work with local assessors to make sure they have the tools and information they need and that voters have the information they need to hold the tax assessors accountable. We also must ensure that the Louisiana Tax Commission proactively works with assessors to promote uniform guidelines for fair assessment. |
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F2. Fiscal Responsibility: What changes, if any, would you propose to our tax structure (including changing taxes, repeal of taxes, tax credits and creation of incentives) to make Louisiana more competitive with other states? |
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While there is a need for us to revisit our overall state tax structure at some point, we could also waste a lot of time trying to create (and pass) the perfect plan. A more effective approach would be to make the most urgently needed changes now. Specifically, our state needs to eliminate unorthodox taxes on business investment – the sales tax on manufacturing machinery and equipment (MM&E) and the franchise tax on corporate debt. I call these collectively the New Job Tax because they provide a disincentive for companies to make investments and create jobs in our state. Similarly, we should not impose property taxes on oil platforms that have been brought in for repairs from OCS waters. We currently are losing jobs because these rigs are being sent elsewhere to avoid Louisiana’s tax. Phasing out these three punishing taxes will provide a much-needed spark to our economy. |
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G1. Health Care: There continues to be much talk about reforming the state-run Charity Hospital System. Suggestions have included closing hospitals or converting them to local ownership, using non-state facilities to provide more services, and expanding outpatient services to local communities. What do you believe is the long-term role of the LSU Charity Hospital System in Louisiana and what are your plans, if any, to specifically reform the system? |
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We must move toward more local governance, even as we keep the group purchasing savings of the LSU System. The option of local governance of outpatient services began in Jefferson Parish and, when I was at DHH, expanded to the Capital Area region. The state should commit to local communities a base level of indigent funding so they keep additional revenues generated to give them more incentives to operate efficiently. Some communities will choose to make capital investments to develop state of the art academic medical facilities, focusing on unique centers of excellence rather than duplicating programs; others will contract with the private sector to use existing excess capacity when it is more efficient to do so. Local communities can discover the efficiencies of integrating care, and providing one-stop services rather than offering citizens complicated bureaucracy. We should shift our emphasis to preventive, primary, and outpatient care to improve patient outcomes, lower the cost of health care, and reduce the burden on private providers. |
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G2. Health Care: There are questions surrounding the size and scope of the new public hospital being proposed for New Orleans. Action taken by the 2007 Legislature removed federal funding in favor of the state shouldering the entire financial burden for this project. Do you support building a new public hospital in New Orleans? If so, how should it be financed and what factors should be considered in determining its scope and size? |
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G3. Health Care: Louisiana appears to be moving in conflicting directions when it comes to providing health care coverage for the uninsured. The Health Care Redesign Collaborative formed following the 2005 storms recommended providing private health care coverage for the uninsured and allow the money to follow the patient. The 2007 Legislature provided a small opportunity for uninsured children to be covered by private insurance while providing substantial funding for the public system. What is you position on covering the uninsured? |
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Louisiana must reform Medicaid to cover more of the uninsured with existing dollars by encouraging private coverage. We can follow the models I helped create in Washington that are being used elsewhere to cover millions with no additional spending. The working poor who stay off welfare do not get preventive services and often end up in ERs. The result: providers do not get compensated and we all pay higher prices. We must pursue federally funded health centers to provide medical homes for the uninsured, and also pursue federal Health Service Corps dollars to compensate providers serving high-need areas. We must end the “one size fits all" mentality. I will work with Congress to enact the President’s $80 billion tax credit to help the working poor afford private coverage. We should avoid costly mandates, encourage economies of scale, and otherwise make it more affordable for small businesses to offer their employees private coverage. |
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H1. Public Safety: Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate and murder rate in the country. Voters continue to express serious concern about crime and their own personal safety. What can you do as governor to help increase public safety and reduce the high level of crime in our state? |
Incarceration rates are still very high because we have tough sentencing laws – the truth in sentencing laws mean those convicted are not getting out as quickly – thus we need more prison beds. The good news is the bad folks aren't on the street. The bad news is we are paying too much to keep able-bodied workers locked up, many of whom are nonviolent offenders. We should make sure that able-bodied prisoners are working, e.g., on anti-litter campaigns, and/or are learning a trade to avoid recidivism. However, prisoners who committed violent crimes are another matter – I’d rather pay to keep them in prison than naively put them back on the streets. In addition, the state should work with successful faith and community-based groups to help lower recidivism rates.
Addressing crime requires both short-term and long-term actions. In the short-term, we must ensure that we maintain the strength of law enforcement, in part by ensuring that they have the technology they need to do their jobs well. In the long-term, however, the real way to dramatically reduce crime rates is to implement needed reforms in education and economic development (as articulated earlier). Education and economic development are the best antidotes to crime. |
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I1. Coastal Restoration: Louisiana’s coastal wetlands are eroding at an alarming rate. Communities, industries, our economy and a vast eco-system are all threatened if this continues unabated. Through both federal and state sources billions of dollars will be available for wetland restoration and hurricane protection in the next several years. What would you do as governor to ensure that these tax dollars will be used wisely, based on sound science and planning, and that these efforts will be held accountable for results? |
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J1: Public Trust: Voters continue to express deep concerns about political corruption, conflicts of interest and the desire for more open government. Several substantive ethics reform proposals have been consistently defeated over recent years. Which, if any, of the following reforms would your administration introduce as legislation and actively support? Prohibit legislators from accepting tickets to sporting and cultural events from lobbyists; Legislative financial disclosure; Disclosure of information about nonprofit or other non-governmental organizations that receive “earmark” funding through legislative amendments to the budget; Prohibit legislators from doing business with the state unless contracts are competitively bid; Disclosure of information related to lobbying activities; Prohibit elected officials from using their own Political Action Committees (PACS) or campaign funds to support other candidates for office; other. |
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Regrettably, our state has paid an enormous economic price for the history and lingering image of corruption in our state and local governments. Some companies simply will not invest here for this reason alone. We should completely turn around this image by becoming one of the most progressive states in issues of ethics and open government. At a minimum, we should maintain a strong legislative auditor’s office, extend lobbying laws to cover lobbying of the executive branch, and keep the state’s public records and open meetings laws strong (e.g., by establishing a voluntary mediation program to ensure that records requests are treated fairly without forcing citizens to take legal action to access public information). Finally, we should toughen the financial disclosure reporting requirements for all elected officials, including the governor. |
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